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Development of On-line Legal Research in Hong Kong

1.Some 25 years ago when I first started practising in Hong Kong, electric typewriters were not used by many barristers. Although computers were already a known creature in those days, we never thought of using them for legal research. In those days, there was still the updating service for the Law Reports. Small slips of papers were stuck onto the first page of the report indicating that the case had been distinguished, applied or overruled etc. I cannot now recall how often these updating slips were printed in those days. It appeared that they were printed by some publishers in England and the users would have to cut out the slips and have them stuck on to the Law Reports.

2.This updating service was only available for the official Law Reports of England. No such service is available for the Hong Kong Law Reports, although in those days, the Legal Department did publish from time to time note up service for the Laws of Hong Kong. As a quick reference for updating the English judicial decisions generally, there was the Current Law Citator, and on the local side, there was the Law Report Digests edited by the late Justice Addison.

3.In doing legal research in those days we would rely heavily on text books and our own experience. Text books have always been rather expensive and new editions came up every 2 or 3 years. In fact the tendency is that new editions would come out much more frequently than before. Often even if one was using the most up to date text book, one would still feel obliged to turn up the last few volumes of the Law Reports in order to make sure that one had got the up- to-date decisions.

4.As it should be the case, only cases involving important legal principles would be reported. For personal injuries cases, where most of the decisions on quantum were application of the well-known principles to particular type of injuries, the decisions were mostly unreported. Hence for advice on quantum for personal injuries cases, often one had to look for unreported judgments by going through the files of unreported judgments laboriously in the Supreme Court library or alternatively going through the section on personal injuries decisions in the Hong Kong Law Journals.

5.Then came the 1980s when there was the beginning of the use of word processors. By the mid-1980s there were barristers making use of the word processors to store information on quantum for personal injuries so as to build up their own data bank for subsequent research.

6.In the 1990s there was a rapid development of personal computers and their being used in lawyers’ offices both for office and research purposes. Many sets of law reports had gone electronics. Notably for the English decisions, there were the electronic Law Reports, the Lloyds Law Reports and the Weekly Law Reports; and for the local Law Reports, there were the electronic Hong Kong Law Reports and Digest and also the Hong Kong Cases.

7.Although going on-line as an aid for legal research had been in place in the UK and the USA for quite some time, in Hong Kong going on-line for legal research was first started in the mid 1990s about a decade behind the more advanced countries. Although such service was probably available for some users in Hong Kong, this was by no means popular with or affordable by many legal practitioners. Instead locally, initially there was the Infolaw service operated by Wang giving some limited access to local legislation and judicial decisions. The service terminated some time at the end of 1997. Thereafter there were other service providers taking its place. Apart from making the service available at a much more affordable price, depending on the price package, source material open for searches would extend to decisions and material from the UK, the Commonwealth Countries and also the USA. Of course today, we also have other competing service providers, like WestLaw.

8.On-line research not only revolutionizes the technique of doing legal research, it also makes a modern young lawyer’s office looks quite different from the traditional lawyer’s office where one would find a lot of shelves packed with old law reports and books. With the aid of electronic on-line search, it is now easy to have access to Commonwealth Countries’ decisions, while before, very few private libraries of law firms or barristers’ chambers would stock any set of law reports from the Commonwealth Countries. Nowadays, it is a lot more common to find decisions from the Commonwealth Countries being cited in Court. This is exactly what we need because since July 1997, Hong Kong has its Court of Final Appeal and our dependence on the English jurisprudence is less strong than before.

9.On the legislation side, it is nowadays no longer necessary to employ someone to do the note up service on the Laws of Hong Kong – the Legal Department (or Department of Justice now) has ceased providing the note up instructions and printout. While from time to time, there are amendments to legislations, one only needs to go on-line to find out the up-to-date versions of the legislations.

10.To conclude, modern technology does provide a lot of convenience and aid for doing legal research in Hong Kong. Nowadays the lawyers’ training must not be just limited to being able to find the law from traditional paper materials like text books and reports, with the provision of on-line research service, in order to be competitive, it is essential that one should be able to master the basic on-line research skill through internet and computers as well. Going electronics and on-line is the inevitable trend, and we should all get ourselves prepared for it better sooner than later.

Dated this 2nd day of July 2003.

Edward Chan S.C.